aMule Forum

English => aMule Help => Topic started by: sabin on August 25, 2006, 11:50:40 AM

Title: Restricting the number of persons with whom we simultaneously share
Post by: sabin on August 25, 2006, 11:50:40 AM
Hello there :)

I'm sharing many files of a large size (25-150 Mo in average) with VERY few sources, and sometimes I'm the only source on the network.

Considering this, I feel angry every time I see the way amule (just like emule, just like edonkey, I don't say that's program-specific, but I'm an amule user after all, so I ask here ^^) shares the file : it divides my bandwith into many uploads of different files to different persons. For instance, my upload capacity is 90 Ko/s : amule divides my uploads in threads of 6 Ko per user; considering i'm sharing files between 25 and 150 Mo, it's nearly impossible for a person downloading from me to get a complete file in a day, and my computer is shutdown every night, too bad for the downloaders  ;(.
I feel it would be MUCH MORE EFFICIENT to upload at high speed to fewer persons, so that there would be much faster users with complete files, able to share complete files in their turn.
In the current state of things, the files I'm sharing are largely spread over the network but nearly nobody has a complete file, that must be most frustrating for the people trying to leech from me.

In fact, what i'd like would be comparable to the "super seed" option in the bittorrent clients.

Would you know if there's a way to configure amule or hack it so that the program changes the way he shares files ?
For instance, so that it would only upload to 3 different persons at a time, for instance ?

Thanks if you can help  :baby:
Title: Re: Restricting the number of persons with whom we simultaneously share
Post by: lionel77 on August 25, 2006, 09:38:52 PM
Well, first of all, you can set the number of upload slots implicitly using the slot allocation setting in the preferences. If your upload limit is 90kb/s it probably makes sense to set the slot allocation to 15kb/s. That would result in 6 upload slots with 15kb/s each. You can also try setting the slot allocation to a higher value, resulting in fewer slots, but if you do this, monitor your total upload speed to make sure you are reaching your upload limit.

But with respect to your original concern, this does not make much difference anyway, because aMule disconnects a client after he has downloaded a full chunk (9.28mb). This, however, is A Good Thing, because this way, a file is spread much *more* efficiently. The problem is, if you upload the full file to a single client, that person can only upload so much, but if you upload different chunks to different clients (and that is exactly what all ed2k apps do), then all those people can upload 'their' chunk to other clients, and the different chunks spread much faster.

Think about it for a little, it really does make sense. ;)
Title: Re: Restricting the number of persons with whom we simultaneously share
Post by: sabin on August 25, 2006, 09:49:19 PM
Hmmm, IMHO - and I have thought about that ^^ - that system is efficient for files with several persons already sharing it and having it completely, and for files with still an average number of sharers.
In my case, I'm sharing about a thousand files of average size, and the result is that, even though I upload a lot, there are still nearly noone with complete files. Besides, since very few people share them, for files with a low demand, there won't be much spreading anyway.
I might be wrong of course, but I feel that in this case : big files, very few persons able to share it, the basic edonkey system is wrong.

But well, I didn't know about the disconnexion after 9.28 MB chunk  8o
That makes any point rather useless !

So well, I guess i'll stick to my current settings, after all...

Thanks for the interesting reply, Lionel 77 :)
Title: Re: Restricting the number of persons with whom we simultaneously share
Post by: lionel77 on August 26, 2006, 12:22:35 AM
Hmm... I'm a little inclined to say that the problem is then that you are sharing a huge number of almost unique files without having the necessary bandwidth to actually serve them. If aMule worked like you suggested, only a very small fraction of the people who request a file from you would actually get it and the rest would pretty much wait forever to see a single byte.

I'm actually a little surprised that you don't get any error messages from the servers, because I thought most had a limit (like 300 or so) for the number of files shared by a client that they accept.

Anyway, I think the only realistic option for you is to cut down on the number of files that you share.